Thursday, 19 July 2012

Germany Smashes Solar Energy Records

Germany has smashed all existing
solar energy output records by producing a massive 22 gigawatts of green
energy. This report comes as a timely break from the never ending stories
of countries reporting that it is not viable to decommission their nuclear
power plants and go solar.

As we move further and further
down the track towards peak oil and the energy crises, it is a positive sign
that super powers like Germany can actually produce a hefty amount of the nations
energy with out leaving a massive carbon footprint.

Germany’s solar power plants produced a record 22
gigawatts of energy on Friday, equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants.
The country is already a world-leader in solar power and hopes to be free of
nuclear energy by 2022. The director of the Institute of the Renewable
Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, northeast Germany, said the solar power
delivered to the national grid on Saturday met 50 per cent of the nation’s
energy quota.

“Never before anywhere has a country produced as
much photovoltaic electricity. Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt (GW) mark
a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over,”
Norbert Allnoch told Reuters news agency.

The German government decided to turn its back on
nuclear energy last year after the Fukushima disaster and plans to be
nuclear-free by 2022. Critics have rounded on the initiative, skeptical that
renewable sources can meet the nation’s growing energy needs.

“This shows Germany is capable of meeting a large
share of its electricity needs with solar power. It also shows Germany can do
with fewer coal-burning power plants, gas-burning plants and nuclear plants,”
stressed Allmoch.

Merkel’s government has invested large amounts of
money in restructuring the nation’s energy infrastructure and weaning it off
atomic energy. It has almost as much solar power energy units as the rest of
the world combined and currently generates four per cent of its annual energy
needs from the Sun.